


All night to say Yes

by GuiltySpark2K12



Category: Bob Hearts Abishola
Genre: Awkward Romance, Interracial Relationship, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:27:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24213667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltySpark2K12/pseuds/GuiltySpark2K12
Summary: A year ago today, two significant things happened in the life of Bob Wheeler, Detroit's king of compression socks.First, he had a heart attack that landed him in the hospital. Which led directly to the second......he fell in love.With a firm but kindly Nigerian nurse with dreadlocks down her back and a minuscule gap between her front teeth.As minuscule as the little hint of a sadistic streak that made him love her more.They were beating the odds to make it work, and then an insidious little breath-inhibiting virus got between them, leaving him with just his memories......until the day they can meet again, assuming the pandemic fades at all.Should it ever lift, he has to say what's in his heart.
Relationships: Christina Wheeler/Kofo Olanipekun, Dorothy "Dottie" Wheeler/Hank Sobieski, Kemi (Bob Hearts Abishola)/Chukwuemeka Mborata, Robert "Bob" Wheeler/Abishola Bolatito Doyinsola Oluwatoyin Adebambo
Comments: 16
Kudos: 10





	All night to say Yes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been over a year since the heart attack that changed his life...
> 
> ...and the day he met the woman that gave him a reason to stick to the changes.
> 
> It's been a long, weird ride and the slowest-paced relationship he's ever been in...
> 
> ...and it's the most meaningful thing to ever happen to him since the day he had to give up playing football and step up to take care of his family and business.
> 
> They were finally getting somewhere, and then the pandemic pushed them apart, with her on the front lines and him in quarantine...
> 
> ...and all he has now is his memories and dreams.
> 
> He knows he has to tell her what he feels in his heart...
> 
> ...in a way that won't scare her away.
> 
> He's got a whole lockdown to find the words.
> 
> Hopefully that'll be enough time...right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this looks patchy and incomplete, and I admit, it is, but the chance to write AO3's first _Bob Hearts Abishola _fanfic was too good to miss, and I ended up posting the draft by mistake.__  
>  _  
>  _(Don't worry, when I finish it proper, I'll mention so)_  
> _  
>  _  
>  _I only hope that the Google Translations are accurate...and if they aren't, I would deeply appreciate any Yoruba-phonic readers out there to give me a hand.__  
> 

Bob Wheeler looked languorously at the glass pane in the door of his refrigerator, biting back the desire to drive his face into the cold chicken that dripped herbed garlicky buttermilk onto the baked potato slices below.

He wanted it. He needed it.

Or did he?

Was he just eating his feelings again?

If he was, he sure had a hell of a lot of them to eat through.

It had been over a year - not much over, though - since the first major heart attack he had ever experienced

From the confines and comforts of his expensive home, the true nature of the feelings he harboured for her had been more than alarmingly obvious. It was not like they had not been there before, but they had been reluctantly and forcibly dormant, their only active presence remaining a warm, growing glow at the root of his heart. He had been forced to rein them in solely as a concern for her feelings, knowing she was uncomfortable with what they were.

It didn't change the fact that he was a fifty-one-year-old immensely overweight white man who was hopelessly in love with a thirty-six-year-old extremely fit black woman.

_"If I lose a pinkie, then screw it! It died for love!"_ the outburst flashed into his mind again as he recalled a particularly snowy day.

They'd spent much of their time fighting and the rest of it in mostly awkward silences and stares and sit-downs sipping tea. They didn't even kiss, usually. Their first kiss was kind of inadvertent, like she was trying to shut him up.

And their second was kind of silly.

And did he seriously walk out of their third because of something to do with her son? It was only meant to be a peck goodnight. She never did that! Why didn't he take that chance? (Come to think of it, why was _he_ more concerned about _her_ son’s emotional well-being than _she_ was? It was like a blind spot with her! _And_ a _sore_ spot, if he remembered his attempts at breaching it her correctly)

They hadn't seen each other in over five months thanks to the coronavirus pandemic keeping her locked in at the hospital. He kept replaying in his mind the last conversation they actually had face-to-face:

* * *

_He was waiting for her in his open kitchen, his hand lingering over the glass pane of his fridge where a light beer teased and tantalised him. He had just discarded his suit for a well-worn Lions jersey and corduroys, intending for the two of them to sit down with the rice she had made. He was really getting to love jollof. One of these days, he thought to himself, he should probably ask her to teach him how to make it._

_His hand gently nestled the Tupperware of rice safely to the centre of the kitchen table. "Abishola?" he called to the bedroom where his mother still stayed in her wheelchair._

_"One minute, Bob," she called back._

_To anybody's ears but his, he thought, that Nigerian accent would've sounded stilted, foreign, and just weird. But he loved the way she said his name. Just the simple act of pronouncing it "bobb" as opposed to "bahb" tickled his heart and made him smile. If he had to trace just when he fell in love with her, it would be every time she said his name._

_Sure, he could keep count, and even began counting from when she helped him to the bathroom in the hospital, but something about the way she said it made him all wobbly. As she emerged from his mother’s bedroom, wrapping that floppy shapeless rainbow she called a cardigan around herself, he felt himself_

_"Hey," he smiled eagerly, pulling her in for a brief one-arm hug. "Everything okay in there?" "Quite," she smiled back. "I was just letting your mother rest. She was in the middle of a video call with Hank again."_

_"Oh, getting in a little 'hello, sailor', eh?" he grinned. "What's so funny?" she asked. "Of course she'd say hello to her sailor friend. What is there to laugh about?" "No, it's just a way of flirting, you know?" he stuttered, trying to backtrack. "I mean, he's an old sailor, she was kinda, well...frisky in her day, she says, it's the whole thing about making port-"_

_It was just then that he noticed the familiar gap-toothed grin light up her face._

_"She told you what it means, didn't she?" he sighed with false indignation._

_The grin broadened as she ducked her head away to suppress her giggle. (It didn't work.)_

_"And when were you planning on telling me?" he asked with mock annoyance._

_"I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't. I like watching you stumble over your words like that," she giggled._

_He just **had** to kiss her after that._

_"Bob," she began as their kiss broke, "I noticed that your mother is doing very well. She has regained significantly more mobility in her legs and arm, though I cannot say it is viable to let her out of the chair quite yet." She wouldn't meet his gaze as she spoke, her free hand caressing her phone hand like an itch she couldn't scratch._

_"Well, that's just great," he smiled. "Say, does this mean she's well enough to join us for dinner at the table?" he asked gingerly, face poised to fall. "Not just as yet," she smiled back, watching his face light up. “But can you at least **try** not to look so happy?”_

_Well, of course **that** netted another kiss._

_And **what** a kiss!_

_He always loved the way her lips dwarfed his whenever they touched. It was almost like getting halfway to tongue, not that they ever got that far. (They almost did, though,_

_“I don’t think we’ve kissed like that since you showed up Lorraine,” he smiled as their lips parted._

_“Are you actually keeping track?” she asked mischievously._

_“Well, in case you didn’t notice, we don’t really kiss a lot, so can you blame me?” he smiled. “I mean, every kiss we share feels like an event.”_

_“You might want to think about that,” she replied, throwing a deep and yet mischievous glance in his direction._

_"Believe me, I do," he smiled. "It's just about all I think about between work and us."_

_At the mention of the word “us”, she suddenly turned her face away._

_“What did I say wrong this time?” he asked, nervously._

_"I got a call from the hospital," she sighed. "The coronavirus situation is getting far worse." "What's the big deal about it anyway?" he asked, only mildly indignant. "I mean, these kind of things happen a lot, right? It's basically a souped-up cold, right?"_

_"Not like this," she snapped. "What makes this coronavirus so dangerous is just how insidious it can be. It shuts down the impulses that control the intake of breath in such a manner that the body does not even become aware."_

_He felt his jaw drop. "So wait...that means..."_

_"It is highly communicable," she answered in the mellifluous deep voice he'd come to love. "Everyone is at risk."_

_"In that case," he began, "should you even go back to the hospital? It's probably safer if you register as a home care nurse here. You'll be out of the danger zone, you can still be paid by the hospital, we can be together, maybe even move Dele in-"_

_"I go where I am needed, Bob."_

_She always knew how to silence him with a look._

_But for the first time, that look began to melt._

_"If this turns into a pandemic - and right now that is exactly what it looks like - I am going to be needed at the hospital," she sighed, turning her face away. "But what about us?" he asked feebly. "What about Dele, Olu and Tunde?"_

_"I cannot risk exposing them," she sighed, her voice sinking lower than he had ever heard it before._

_"I should not even be talking to you right now. For all we know, your handlers might be infected even as we speak, since your company does handle cargo coming in from China and Malaysia."_

_"Gloria just texted from the hospital desk. Woodward Memorial has just confirmed its first two coronavirus cases."_

_"Nothing's been coming in, Abishola," he snapped back. "Why do you think I've been at home this week?”_

_“Listen, let's not fight, okay? If you have to do this, you have to do this. But let's eat first, okay? You're gonna need all the strength you can get, and this is probably gonna be our last time together for a while."_

_He was amazed at how together he sounded. Normally she was the stable one in their relationship._

_A sinking feeling ran through the Cadillac as it pulled up to the hospital’s reception gate._

_“What is this gonna mean for us, Abishola?” he asked hesitatingly._

_“I wish I had an answer, Bob,” she sighed. “Right now, all I can say is that this is where I have to be.”_

_Her hand in the door bracket, she turned to him. “Bob…if anything happens-”_

_His hand caught hers. “I’ll keep an eye out for Dele, I promise.”_

_“I-I know you will,” she sighed, catching herself as the stutter died on her tongue. “But-”_

_No words were said as his free fingers plucked the gauze away from her face and their eyes met for that last time._

_No words were said as her door hand found the back of his head and her phone hand found a pocket in her cardigan._

_No words were said as his lips found hers and her hands went beneath his coat to find the back of his jersey._

_No words were said until a horn went off behind them and her fingers had to fumble for the door._

_"I'll be here when the world starts breathing again, okay?" he said, trying his hardest to smile._

_"Thank you," she breathed softly, pulling up her scrub mask again._

_Even as she turned away, he thought he saw the sheen of tears on her eyes._

_"Thank you," she breathed softly, pulling up her scrub mask again._

_Even as she turned away, he thought he saw the sheen of tears on her eyes._

The memory of the tears causing his own to well up, Bob reached into the depths of his freezer, rifling around it for a cardboard tub the size of his hand. He had hand-washed this tub so reverently since its emptying he was amazed it hadn't fallen apart yet. It rattled satisfactorily as he finally picked it up, his thumb caressing the label's scoop of ice cream the way it caressed her cheek in his dreams.

_"We're like ice cream for breakfast,"_ he'd said to her. _"Doesn't seem like a good idea, but if it makes you happy...why not?"_

And then she went and bought him a tub of chocolate chip. The very tub he was holding in his hand right now.

That tub had been saved for their first black tea milkshake that they both actually enjoyed, surprised by what an interesting substitute the ice cream made for milk.

That tub had nearly cost his pothead twin siblings their fingers when they tried to grab it during a munchie-derived binge, leading him to slam the freezer door on their hands, which peaked with an unexpected word of praise from his mother and a somewhat under-heated exchange of sentiments and sensibility with Abishola. (She agreed with him on the vapid and selfish actions on Douglas and Christina's parts, though.)

He rattled it again and carefully removed the lid, feeling a warm glow touch his heart as he tipped it on its side to let the ring spill into his hand.

It wasn't an ancestral ring. It wasn't a diamond ring. It wasn't even an expensive ring.

It was a simple signet ring with the head of a lion on it. A class ring he had earned for his time on the football field.

A ring that he had forgotten about after the death of his father changed everything in his life.

A ring that he had remembered and recovered for the next time everything changed in his life.

"Brick by brick..." he whispered to the ring, his tears starting to fall. "Brick by brick."

"Mo ni ife si e pupo, Abishola," he whispered under his breath. "I love you so much it hurts."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> E kaaro, bienvenidos, konnichiwa, bonjour, and salaam namaste, AO3!
> 
> I'm probably the only person I know who likes Bob Hearts Abishola, if the Change.org petition against it is anything to go by.
> 
> However, I sadly know from experience that people from the old countries making a life in the new one rarely let go of the traditions they grew up in...so the "stereotypes" are very real.


End file.
